An Essay on the Different Nature of Accent and Quantity

Excerpt from An Essay on the Different Nature of Accent and Quantity: With Their Use and Application in the English, Latin, and Greek Languages
In order to illustrate in a clearer manner some incidental points, which are connected with my main question, a few corrections and many additions have, since the fist publication of this Essay, appeared necessary. Of this kind the reader will find, in the following pages, some farther observations on the harmony and verse of our own language; on certain peculiarities in the origination of the Roman; and on the long continued purity of the Greek. Particularly the ratio of the falling times in the doctrine of accents, as they differ in the Roman and Greek languages, and the distinction between the accentual and metrical arsis, the confusion of which hath frequently perplexed this subject, and which I did not sufficiently point out, are here more accurately stated. Many positive proofs of the authenticity of our present Greek accentuation, from the ancient grammarians, are likewise now added: which, although more easily produced than those general proofs of presumption and inference before alleged, and in themselves, and their own nature, less cogent (because they are often confined to single words, whereas the general proofs of induction extend to the system of a whole language), are yet to some readers more persuasive, and are therefore not here omitted.
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